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His purchase a year ago had shut all commercial activities at the Hall down. There had been a picket at the end of the drive for a week in protest until he’d called in the police.
‘This is not what we agreed, Deda.’
‘I know what you’re about to say,’ his grandfather blustered, ‘but I changed my mind. Besides, no final decision was made.’
‘No, we talked about it when you moved in and we decided to leave the matter in my hands.’
‘And now it’s in Sybella’s,’ his grandfather said smugly.
Sybella.
Nik couldn’t help picturing one of the matronly women who had picketed the drive, in her husband’s oversized hunting jacket and wellington boots, face like the back of a shovel, shouting about British heritage and marching a troop of equally appalling kids through his grandfather’s home. When she wasn’t going through Deda’s papers and possibly siphoning his bank account.
This was not what he wanted to hear. He had a new pipe starting up in Archangelsk, which would keep him in the north for much of this year. Business was expanding and he needed to be on site.
But now he had a new problem: a white elephant of a property sitting up in the English Cotswolds he’d been ignoring for too long, currently housing his grandfather and apparently the local historical group.
Nik didn’t have time for this, but he knew he was going to have to make time.
‘And what does this Sybella have to do with the Heritage Trust when she’s not cooking and cleaning and herding children?’ he asked tightly.
His grandfather chuckled and delivered the coup de grâce. ‘She runs it.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_72cc5bd6-c030-5ce1-a844-c900a8460722)
THE PRESIDENT OF the local branch of the Heritage Trust stood up, removed her glasses and announced somewhat dolefully to the committee members assembled that a legal document had been lodged this morning at the trust’s London office suspending any further activity of the trust in the Hall.
‘Does that mean we can’t use the empty gatehouse as a visitors’ centre?’ Mrs Merrywether wanted to know. ‘Because Sybella said we could.’
A dozen grey heads turned and Sybella found herself sinking a little lower in her chair, because she had indeed waved a letter around last month claiming they had the right.
But dodging responsibility wasn’t her way.
‘I can’t understand why this has happened,’ she told the meeting, feeling very guilty and responsible for the confusion that had gripped the room. ‘I’ll look into it and sort it out. I promise.’
Seated beside her Mr Williams, the retired local accountant, patted her arm. ‘We know you will, Sybella, we trust your judgement. You haven’t led us wrong once.’
There was a hum of agreement, which only made Sybella feel worse as she packed up her notes and made her usual early departure.
She had worked hard for twelve months to make Edbury Hall a place of life and activity for its new incumbent, Mr Voronov, and continue to earn its keep for the village. While this house might personally remind her of some grim stage set for a horror film starring Christopher Lee, the Hall also brought in its share of the tourist trade and kept the local shops turning over.
If this all collapsed it would affect everybody. And she would be responsible.
Rugging herself up in the boot room for her dash home, Sybella fished her phone out of her jeans back pocket and rang her sister-in-law.
Meg lived in a jaunty little semi-detached house on a busy road in Oxford, where she taught art to people with no real aptitude for painting and belly danced at a local Egyptian restaurant. She took off and travelled at the drop of a hat. Her life was possibly the one Sybella would have gravitated towards if life in all its infinite twists of fate hadn’t set her on another course, with much more responsibility and less room to move. Sybella considered Meg her best friend.
‘It’s the letters. I should have known,’ she groaned after a brief rundown on tonight’s meeting. ‘Nobody writes letters any more.’
‘Unless you’re a lonely seventy-nine-year-old man rattling around in a big empty house, trying to fill it with people,’ said Meg.
Sybella sighed. Every time something new occurred at the Hall Mr Voronov gave the same advice.
‘Just write to my grandson and let him know. I’m sure there will be no problems.’
So she had. She’d written just as she’d been writing every month for the past year detailing events at Edbury Hall.
Because she’d been too damn timid to face him on the phone.
She’d let her native shyness trip her up—again—and this was the tip, Sybella suspected, of a huge iceberg that was going to take her little ship out. She said as much, leaving out the bit about being a timid mouse. Meg didn’t cut you slack for being a mouse.
‘My ship, Meg. My ship of fools, me being the captain!’
Meg was silent and Sybella already knew what was coming.
‘You know what this is a result of? That weird life you lead in the village.’
‘Please, Meg, not now.’ Sybella shouldered her way out of the boot room. The corridor was dark and faintly menacing, although she suspected anyone coming across her would probably run the other way. She was wearing her Climb and Ski gear that was packed with a substance that was supposed to keep you warm and dry in the Arctic. It wasn’t particularly flattering to a woman’s figure and it also inhibited natural movement. She was aware she currently resembled a yeti.
Meg was persistent. ‘You hang around with all those oldies...’
‘You know why I volunteer with the Heritage Trust. It’s going to get me a job in the end.’
Sybella made her way to the servants’ entrance, from which she could slip unnoticed out of the house, cross the courtyard and disappear through a space in the hedge that led to the lane that wound down the hill to the top of her road.
‘Really? You’ve been doing unpaid work for them for over a year. When does it pay off for you?’
‘It’s work experience in my field. Do you know how difficult it is to get a job with just a degree?’
‘I don’t know why you won’t move down to Oxford with me. It’s bristling with opportunities.’
‘Your parents are here,’ she said firmly. She was always firm when it came to her daughter’s well-being. ‘And I’m not removing Fleur from her home.’
‘It’s a two-hour drive. They can see her on weekends.’
‘Who is going to look after her while I’m at work? Think of the practicalities, Meg.’ God knew she had to. If she hadn’t been so busy juggling all the balls life had thrown at her she might have thought through those practicalities with a little more precision at the Hall.
‘Fair enough,’ conceded Meg. ‘But you’ve put a lot of eggs in that house of horrors basket.’
‘Yes, because I have a growing daughter who has her roots in this village—a village with no other job opportunities in my chosen field. I’ve tried Stansfield Castle, Belfort Castle and Lark House. None are interested in someone with lots of education but no on-the-ground experience. Without Edbury Hall, Meg, I’m stuck!’
‘So in the meantime you’re writing letters to a man you’re never going to meet. Should I ask about your love life?’
‘What has my love life got to do with the letters?’
‘I think if you had a boyfriend you wouldn’t have all this extra time to sit around writing letters and sealing envelopes. You’d be like the rest of us and use freaking email.’
‘It wasn’t extra time. It was extra effort. Besides, I do use email. And I’m not looking for a romantic relationship, Meg Parminter.’
‘I don’t know why not. My brother’s been gone six years. You can’t keep hiding away in Mouldering Manor with those oldies, Syb. Seize the day!’
Given her days were quite long, what with her part-time archivist job at the town hall, her volunteer work with the Heritage Trust and sole responsibility for her home-schooled five-year-old daughter, Sybella wasn’t quite sure which part of the day she wasn’t seizing.
Besides, the idea of taking off her clothes in front of a man after six years of not having to endure that specific kind of embarrassment with Simon was not an encouraging one.
‘You know that film you love, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?’ Meg asked. ‘Do you remember at the end when her daughter comes home all grown up with the fiancé? One day that will be Fleur, feeling guilty because she’s got a life and you haven’t!’
‘I will have a life,’ Sybella shot back, confident at least on this point. ‘I’ll be in the midst of a brilliant career as a curator and very fulfilled in my life’s ambition, thank you very much.’
‘Okay, maybe that analogy doesn’t work in the twenty-first century,’ Meg grudgingly allowed. ‘But are you really going to wait another twenty years before you pull the “take a detour” sign down off your bed?’
Sybella pushed open the heavy wooden door and made her way outside. She blew out a breath and watched it take shape in the air.
Blast, it was cold.
‘It’s not a priority for me, Meg.’
‘Well, it should be!’
Sybella looked around to make sure no one was lurking in the bushes to overhear this.
‘I really don’t want to discuss my sex life, or lack of. I’m just not interested,’ she said firmly. ‘There, I’ve said it. Not. Interested. In. Sex. I am, however, very interested in what I’m going to say to Mr Voronov’s grandson when he prosecutes us!’
Which was when she noticed a pricey-looking off-road vehicle coming up the drive, followed by another and another.
Mr Voronov hadn’t mentioned guests. She was familiar with his schedule, given she came and gave him a hand with a few things he refused to entrust to the personal assistant his grandson had engaged for him.
She told Meg she’d call her tomorrow and stowed her phone, pulled the ski mask down over her chin to repel the cold and headed out across the drive to see what they wanted.
* * *
Nik parked in the courtyard, slammed the door behind him and crunched through the snow to open the boot and retrieve his overnight bag.
He’d never seen England’s little tourist Mecca from this vantage point. Driving in, he thought it looked very much as if he’d stumbled onto the film set of the dramatisation of an Agatha Christie novel. Or maybe it was a recreation of Shakespeare’s youth because if he wasn’t mistaken, as the road had opened out into the town square, there had been a maypole.
Sticking up like a needle without a thread.
Everything else was under a ton of snow and ice.
He glanced up at the looming walls of Edbury Hall, with its multifaceted windows and grey stone. Snow drifts had made clumps of the carefully tended hedges and topiary.
It was a picture postcard of Ye Olde England.
No wonder those crackpots and loonies from Edbury’s branch of the Heritage Trust were bombarding his offices in London every time something got raised or lowered on the property.
He sensed rather than heard movement coming up behind him.
Good. Someone around this place was doing their job.
‘Here.’ He bundled the luggage at the rugged-up figure hovering at his shoulder. Then he slammed the back of the vehicle closed and hit the lock device on his keys.
He turned around to find the help was staggering under its weight. Which didn’t last long because the next thing he knew the guy was lying flat on his back in the snow.
He waited. The man wasn’t getting up. He did, however, stick a gloved hand in the air and wave it around. He also made a noise that sounded like a cat being drowned in a barrel. Nik liked animals; he didn’t much like incompetence in people.
Which was when he noticed the black ski mask under the hood of the guy’s coat and Nik lost his easy stance, because in Russia personal security was often a matter of life and death, and right now instinct was telling him this guy was not one of the people he had authorised to work for his grandfather.
He grabbed the interloper by the scruff of his coat and heaved him to his feet.
Sybella tried to cry out but her voice box was currently lodged somewhere in the snow after the impact of hitting the ground.
She found herself being lifted by the scruff of her neck until she was almost hanging, her parka cutting up under her arms, the toes of her new boots scrambling for purchase.
‘Give me your name and your reason for being out here.’
Her assailant had a deep, growly baritone that corresponded with his size. His rich Russian accent meant he probably had something to do with the current owner of this property. Given his size and strength he was possibly a bodyguard.
He was also clearly a bear.
‘Imya?’ he barked out when she didn’t immediately respond.
‘There’s been a mistake,’ Sybella gasped through the fine wool barrier formed by the ski mask over her mouth.
‘What are you, journalist, protester, what?’ He gave her another shake. ‘I’m losing patience.’
‘Put me down,’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’
But even to her ears her plea was muffled into incoherence by all the wool and the wind.
Nevertheless, he dropped her and she landed heavily on the soles of her boots. Before she could react he whipped back the hood of her parka and gathered up a handful of her ski mask, yanking on her hair in the process. The ski mask came away and with it her long heavy flaxen curls. Freed, they began whipping around her face in the frigid wind.
His arms dropped to his sides.
‘You’re a woman,’ he said in English as if this was entirely improbable. His voice was deep and firm and weirdly—given the circumstances—reassuring.
Sybella pushed the wildly flapping hair from her eyes and, finally able to be understood, choked out a little desperately, ‘I was the last time I looked!’
He stepped in front of her, and if she didn’t suspect a little brain damage from all the pushing and shoving, she’d think it was to shield her from the wind and elements.
‘Did I hurt you?’ he demanded, his head bent to hers.
‘N-no.’ Scared the life out of her, but she was in one piece.
At least she no longer felt in danger of ending up on her bottom again. She was also staring, because you didn’t see men like this every day in Edbury.
He was a good head taller than her and she couldn’t see around his shoulders and up close he had slightly slanted grey eyes, thick golden lashes, high flat cheekbones and a strong jaw stubbled in gold. He was gorgeous. His mouth was wide and firm and she found her attention constantly returning to it.
‘What are you doing out here?’ he demanded.
